High Risk Occupation?

Our Tax Season is in full swing now, and the entire staff is working themselves to death trying to keep up with the influx of projects. Regardless, nobody actually expects to die at work in a CPA firm. Other than clogging a few arteries with the ever present cookies and snacks that seem to show up, you wouldn’t think that being a tax preparer is high risk. Well, apparently that’s not always the case.  In Missouri a 53 year old man was arrested for choking an H&R Block worker after he became enraged over his tax situation. The assailant knocked...
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IRS Issues Final ‘Expense vs. Capitalization’ Regs

The Internal Revenue Service has issued final regulations (T.D.9636) on deduction and capitalization of expenditures related to tangible property. The final regulations include rules for determining whether costs related to tangible property are deductible repairs or capital improvements.  Changes made: The final regulations adopt the temporary regulations issued in 2011 (T.D. 9564), with a number of changes. One such change is in response to comments that the $100 threshold for property that is exempt from capitalization was too low. The final rules raise it to $200 and retain the rule that the amount can be increased in IRS guidance. Another…

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The Geithner Defense

Former US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner took a lot of heat during his confirmation hearings when it was revealed that he had not paid all of his income taxes in a timely manner. He was found to be short by almost $35,000, and blamed it on the Turbo Tax software that he used not prompting him for questions.  Thus was born two things: his nickname “TurboTax Timmy” and “the Geithner Defense”. The Geithner defense has been used as an excuse in a number of cases, and although it was enough to get Secretary Geithner out of paying penalties...
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Will you be audited?

Now that our tax season is ramping up, I thought it would be good to address the question that we get a lot: Will I get audited? Here’s the low down on IRS audits: Statistically overall audit rates have actually declined in the last couple years. Not only have IRS personnel been spread thin to deal with implementation of Obamacare and preventing ID theft, among other things, but overall headcount at the Service is down from previous levels due to budget cuts. However, if you fall in to certain categories, your odds of losing the audit lottery are high. If...
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They are Watching !

I was recently surprised to learn that the IRS’ website,  www.IRS.GOV, has a new feature. You can type in some personal data and download transcripts of your own tax return.  Wondering how well the government website designers had fulfilled this objective (call me a skeptic), I decided to give it a try. My first attempt went well until I got to the part about establishing an account or proceeding as a guest. Apparently “guest” was the wrong answer. I was booted off the website. My second attempt got as far as the security questions. I expected them to ask about...
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Digging for out of state gold

Wow, my last post was February? That’s a bit embarrassing as there has been a lot going on in the tax world. Our tax season last year was challenging to say the least, with twice as many tax clients being put on extension than normal. What with delays by Congress in modifying 2012 tax law until January 2013, and the resulting confusion at IRS about how to create forms, we were pushed back quite a bit.Fortunately most of our clients understand it wasn’t our fault, and we are working through the backlog still.Having said that, I saw a news flash…

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